Special Bulletin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article is about a movie. For a breaking news segment, see Special Report.
Special Bulletin

Ed Flanders as RBS anchor John Woodley
Directed by Marshall Herskovitz
Edward Zwick
Starring Ed Flanders
Distributed by NBC
Warner Home Video
Release date(s) March 20, 1983
Running time 105 minutes
Country USA
Language English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Special Bulletin was an American made-for-TV movie first broadcast in 1983. It was an early collaboration between director Edward Zwick and writer Marshall Herskovitz, a team that would later produce such series as thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. In this movie, a terrorist group brings a homemade atomic bomb aboard a tugboat in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in order to blackmail the U.S. Government into disabling its nuclear weapons, and the incident is caught live on television. The movie, shot on video rather than film, simulates a series of live news broadcasts on the fictional RBS Network.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie focuses on the media's coverage of news, and whether covering the news changes it. The film has no opening credits (unusual for the time). Instead, the program begins with a typical daytime morning lineup: previews of various shows, and a catchy network jingle, "RBS: We're Moving Up!" The start of some typical game show begins, when an ominous "We interrupt this program to bring you a Special Bulletin" appears on the screen. It shows how a local TV crew, covering a dockworkers' strike, become caught in the middle of a firefight between the Coast Guard and a tugboat sitting at the dock. After several officers are wounded, the Coast Guardsmen, apparently outgunned, surrender and are taken hostage, as are the reporter and cameraman.

The reporter is later asked to televise a statement by the terrorists and their demands: the impounding and delivery of every nuclear trigger device owned by the U.S. Government in the region (more than 900 such devices). In order that these nuclear triggers (without which, the nuclear weapons stored in that area cannot be used), can be taken out to sea, damaged and dumped overboard, destroying them. The terrorists reveal that they have constructed their own nuclear device -- one roughly equivalent in strength to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 -- which is set to detonate within 24 hours if the demand is not met. The bomb is also hooked to failsafe devices that will set it off if attempts are made to disarm or move it.

As the faux news broadcast continues, details about the terrorists slowly begin to emerge as the broadcast hosted by Susan Myles (Kathryn Walker) and fictional veteran newscaster John Woodley (played by Ed Flanders, best known for his role as Dr. Donald Westphall on the TV drama St. Elsewhere) continues. The group is led by Dr. Bruce Lyman, a scientist and former designer of nuclear weapons for the American government who had recently been imprisoned for taking part in anti-nuclear demonstrations. His cohorts include a nuclear scientist who stole weapons grade plutonium from the nuclear research facility in Hanford, Washington and constructed the bomb, a bank robber whom Lyman met in jail, a poet and anti-war activist implicated in a bombing that killed several people a decade earlier, and a meek housewife, mother of two and social worker who - it is implied - had become romantically involved with Lyman.

Several times during the faux broadcast, Woodley finds himself debating with Lyman and his colleagues the ethics of television journalism and the role it plays in both covering the activities of terrorists and, at the same time, inadvertently promoting such activities. "TV news is essentially show business," Lyman says.

At first the government chooses to ignore and underplay the story. As facts come out indicating the threat to be real and potentially valid, various public announcements occur, culminating with the decision to order the evacuation of the downtown Charleston area, which causes a public panic. The Government later announces, just shortly before the terrorist's deadline, that it would accede to their demands. A van rolls up to the tugboat, allegedly containing the first load of triggers that they had demanded.

In the interim, the terrorists, who are still holding the RBS reporter and cameraman, become suspicious when the TV on which they are monitoring the RBS broadcast suddenly goes blank, supposedly due to a transmitter power failure at the local station. It is at this moment we discover the real reason: to prevent them from seeing a Delta Force team sneaking aboard the tugboat (which is caught live by a distant TV camera). In the ensuing gun battle, all but one of the terrorists is killed by the commandos. The journalists survive without major injury. Significantly, however, the scientist who built the bomb and its anti-tamper devices commits suicide before he can be captured.

All this occurs a little over an hour prior to the detonation time of the bomb. Members of a response team called NEST (a real-life government entity known then as the Nuclear Emergency Search Team but now known as the Nuclear Emergency Support Team) enter the boat in an attempt to defuse the bomb. The reporter and cameraman remain to comment on their efforts despite pleas from the news anchor in New York City that they leave the area. Over a remote camera installed on the tugboat, the NEST team is shown having an argument over how to get around a security mechanism built into the device. Suddenly something within the bomb is activated and the members of the NEST team are seen frantically fleeing the boat. Within seconds, the picture abruptly goes to static as the signal from Charleston is lost.

The network switches back to the main RBS newsroom in New York, which is initially in confusion, the broadcast image briefly going to a test pattern. Woodley at first shows annoyance, looking around at staffers and angrily barking out "What the hell is this?" then falls silent and stunned as he realizes what has probably happened. Myles, nervous and cautious, merely advises viewers that they "seem to have lost contact" with Charleston. After considerable effort to reestablish contact, the anchors manage to get hold of a reporter who was two miles from the tugboat aboard a drydocked aircraft carrier across the harbor. In the midst of wreckage with huge fires blazing in the background, and clearly stunned and dazed ,she expresses fear over the radiation sickness now imminent. Her cameraman, who has also survived, reveals that he was recording a few moments earlier and they ask him to rewind and play back the recording. The tape shows the reporter standing in front of a relatively normal looking harbor overlooking the tugboat, facing the camera, her back to the boat. We then see an enormous bright light coming from the other side of the harbor. As the camera lens recovers from the sudden flash of light, we catch a brief glimpse of a mushroom cloud rising over the shoreline, followed by a huge blast of wind that blows out the windows and knocks the camera over. The tape ends. The cameraman then pans the harbor which is now nothing but a firestorm.

It is revealed that the government's intention was to stall for time until the Delta Force team could be put on the ship, on the assumption the nuclear response team could defuse the nuclear weapon. Now, local authorities and the government have to deal with the destruction of a city, and after showing scenes of mass destruction farther out from the blast, a tearful John Woodley can only say "This is a very dark moment" as the image fades to black.

The film then moves ahead three days to reveal the aftermath of the explosion. Thanks to the evacuation, the immediate death toll was less than 2,000, however another 25,000 suffer burns at a time when the total number of burn unit beds in the United States numbers only about 2,000. Some half a million are left homeless due to inland fallout and the region is expected to be uninhabitable for decades. Then with the typical banality of TV news, the broadcast goes on to cover all the other events around the world (labor riots in Poland, a World Bank announcement) which have continued to occur despite the destruction of Charleston.

[edit] Cast

  • John Woodley (RBS anchor) -- Ed Flanders
  • Susan Myles (RBS anchor) -- Kathryn Walker
  • Steven Levitt (WPIV reporter) -- Christopher Allport
  • Dr. Bruce Lyman (Terrorist) -- David Clennon
  • Frieda Barton (Terrorist) -- Rosalind Cash
  • Megan "Meg" Barclay (WPIV reporter) -- Roxanne Hart
  • Dr. David McKeeson (terrorist) -- David Rasche
  • Morton Sanders (RBS reporter) -- Lane Smith
  • Jim Seaver (terrorist) -- Ebbe Roe Smith
  • Diane Silverman (terrorist) -- Roberta Maxwell
  • Bernard Frost (WPIV reporter) -- J. Wesley Huston

[edit] Impact

The first of the very carefully worded disclaimers
The first of the very carefully worded disclaimers

Several factors enhanced Special Bulletin's resemblance to an actual live news broadcast. The movie was shot on videotape rather than film, which gave the presentation the visual appearance of being "live." And other small touches, such as actors hesitating or stumbling over dialogue (as if being spoken extemporaneously), and small technical glitches (as would often be experienced in a live broadcast) contributed to the realism.

In addition, some specific references made the movie especially realistic to residents of Charleston. The call letters of the fictional Charleston RBS affiliate, WPIV, were uncomfortably close to those of the then NBC affiliate in Charleston, WCIV. And a key plot element mentions "a power failure at a transmitter in North Charleston", an actual suburb of Charleston (the TV transmitter sites are actually in Awendaw).

Because of all this, the filmmakers were required to include on-screen disclaimers (which advised, in part, that "none of what you see is actually happening") at the beginning and end of every commercial break in order to assure viewers that the events were just a dramatization. The word "dramatization" also appeared on the screen during key moments of the original broadcast. The film also made use of "accelerated time" -- events said to take place hours apart instead are shown only minutes apart. Nonetheless, there were still news reports of isolated panic in Charleston. (Much as with the famous 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, it was entirely possible for a viewer to tune in between disclaimers and make a snap judgment about what they were seeing, although in both cases a quick flip of the dial would reveal that no other stations were covering this supposedly major news event.)

[edit] Themes

The movie investigates the issue of the media's coverage of an event, as to whether it changes the event, whether the media is irresponsible in giving such persons access to the airwaves, and whether the media trivializes significant events by the type of coverage given to them. Though not as cynical as the portrayal of the media in the film Die Hard, Special Bulletin takes a serious look at the possible symbiosis between the media and those it has to deal with. whether they be government officials, politicians, terrorists and criminals, or media pundits, in covering a story.

The story also shows the significance of the nuclear stockpiles held by various governments. Based on the size of the bomb as described by the terrorists, basically it will destroy everything within a range of about one mile from ground zero, which is Charleston Harbor. A reporter, discussing the possible effects of an explosion, states that someone standing five miles from the tugboat "would survive the blast at least." A person standing five miles from the blast point of a typical U.S. or Soviet tactical one megaton nuclear weapon, "would be vaporized in the first 3/5 of a second."

[edit] Trivia

  • A decade later, another TV movie simulating a news broadcast was produced: Without Warning.
  • While the production as a whole was very accurate in depicting a news story unfolding in real time, there is one major "blooper" towards the end of the movie. A few minutes after the bomb detonates, the RBS anchor cuts to a live reporter in the field. Suddenly, as in a prepared news story, the same reporter is narrating (in voiceover) short, tightly edited video clips of scenes of fire and destruction around Charleston. In reality, there would not have been anywhere near sufficient time to shoot and edit together these clips.
  • Another "blooper" or plot oversight noted is that when a nuclear device is detonated it sends out an Elecromagnetic Pulse (called EMP), which is basically a pulse of free-electrons caused by the Gamma radiation emitted by the nuclear reaction.[1] This pulse renders inoperable any transistor or microchip powered device within its calculated distance. Although the altitude of the detonation would have to be significant for the effects to be widespread, at ground level a small nuclear device such as the one portrayed in the movie would still give off an EMP within several miles sufficient enough to render the video cameras and possibly the television transmitters inoperable. None of the post-explosion remote television feeds seen would have been possible.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Electromagnetic pulse Wikipedia article.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/p/e/Special_Bulletin_1aa7.html"